When I was 13, my parents packed up the whole family into a RV and took us on a several week cross-country trek across the United States. We started in Western New York, traveled across the northern section of the US, down into California, and heading back across through the southern states. (On a historical note, we were there at San Clemente, Calif., the day Nixon flew there after resigning the presidency.)

Anyway, one day, while we were doing the sights in San Francisco, we went into a little pizza restaurant near Fisherman’s Wharf to get lunch. There were seven of us, my parents and five kids. While behaving like kids, and eating pizza as fast and furious as kids are famous for, a husband and wife sitting at the table next to ours got up to leave (I am not sure if they were leaving because of us). They asked my parents if we’d like the half pizza or so that they had not touched. I don’t recall if my parents (at that point) accepted or not, but they did engage the couple in a bit of a conversation. The usual things came up like what were we doing, what we were visiting, where were we from etc. Then the conversation went something like this:

MyFather: “we’re from New York State”

Woman: “That’s interesting, so are we, but we moved away some years ago.”

Father: “Really, what part of New York?”

Woman: “The western part of the state.”

Father: “So are we, what town?”

Woman: “Well, it was such a small town, if I said it you’d never have heard of it. We were from a town called Arkport.”

Father: “That’s where we’re from!”

Much more conversation and catching up on family and mutual friends followed. And, without doubt, we took the pizza.

[EDITOR: There’s a definite theme with people with precisely common roots running into one another in far-off locations. I particularly like the common assumption that “it’s too small for you to have heard of.” It further increases the oddity of the run-in simply because the number of people who could have any connection to the town in question is severely reduced. And yet we see it a lot. Is there any meaning behind it? Did they learn anything from this endeavor, or make a connection that was of particular value? It doesn’t sound like it. There’s no lesson to be learned. But it just shows us that unlikely events like this clearly happen for no reason all the time. Which means occasionally they’ll happen even when there does appear to be some hidden message. But that’s only to be expected.]

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